Expat Infidelity Poll

Help... We moved our monthly Expat Women Poll from our Home Page to our Polls section this month, when ExpatWomen.com underwent it's March makeover. The problem now seems to be that the Poll is a bit too buried on the site and we need more responses.

Granted, some women might be scared to commit an answer to a question about infidelity... but given that our Poll is completely anonymous and no ExpatWomen tracking device whatsoever will find out who said what (we assure you), we hope you will click on this link and take the 5 seconds you need to click on your multiple-choice response to the following:

Question:

What is Your Experience with Infidelity Abroad?


Possible Answers:

• My Partner Has Had An Affair, But I Have Not
• My Partner Has Had An Affair, And I Have Too
• My Partner Has Not Had An Affair, But I Have
• I Suspect My Partner Has Had An Affair
• I Want To Have An Affair
• We Have Both Been 100% Faithful

Thanks in advance for your help!

Want to Win a Web Award?

If you have ever wondered how web experts would view your web site or blog, here is a great way to get some feedback and potentially receive some valuable recognition for your efforts...

The US-based Web Marketing Association has just announced it's 2008 call for entries to its annual WebAward Competition, with the deadline for entry being 31 May. You do not need to be a US-based company to enter. The entry costs US$195 (or US$99 for non-profits), but the sweeteners are:

(1) There are 96 (!) categories in which they typically announce several winners per category; and

(2) Every site entered receives rankings (and sometimes valuable judges' comments) across different selection criteria, so you can see just how you are doing and get some focus on how best to improve your site.

Last year, in our first year online, we entered ExpatWomen.com just to get some feedback from what we saw as 'real' web experts. We ended up winning (which they noted was primarily due to our content, rather than any super-interactive feature on our site) a Standard of Excellence award in our Online Community category.

This award was undeniably nice to show our sponsors and supporters, but more useful to us were the scores, rankings and two pages of extremely valuable feedback from their volunteer judges. That alone was well-worth the price of entry. (We will not be entering this year, but that is because we still have such great feedback to work on from last year.)

Now, in case you are wondering if they hand out awards to 'just anyone'... here is the list of the top 12 winners last year (note that Disney's name is mentioned twice), and here is the MyCoke site (aka another big name, Coca-Cola) that won last year in the Online Community category.

After approving the (exactly) 444 Expat Women Blogs on our site, I know that some of you have some really fabulous sites and blogs - so I hope some of you enter and win - then be sure to tell us, so we can showcase your winning blog here on our blog.

Good luck Everyone!
Andrea.

Are You An American Expat Lawyer?

Hi Everyone, This post is specifically for American Expat Lawyers, who might be able to help Amy Montemarano at the Drexel College of Law in the US:

"I am writing an article (and extending it into a book) on international legal careers and would like to interview (through email & telephone) ex-pats who were graduated from a U.S. law school and are now working in other countries. The article/book will feature "profiles" of how U.S. lawyers found their jobs working abroad. The intended audience is law students. The article will be placed in legal newspapers/magazines and will also be put on the website of Drexel University College of Law. The book will hopefully be published by the ABA (or similar legal organization) in its career division. I will run all final drafts of the interviews to confirm accuracy and make sure there is nothing confidential in what is said. This is being written in my professional capacity as Assistant Dean of Career & Professional Development at Drexel College of Law. Please contact me if you are interested in talking about your career. I anticipate gathering interviews from April through May 2008. Thank you."

If you can help Amy, please contact her directly via:

Amy Montemarano Esq.
Assistant Dean of Career & Professional Development
Drexel University College of Law
3320 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 571-4720
amymonte@drexel.edu
www.drexel.edu/law

Many thanks!

Expat Mentoring in BR Anchor News

Hi Everyone. Have you ever heard of BR Anchor Publishing? If you are a HR/Relocation Manager and you have not, then read on...

BR Anchor Publishing was started in the US in 1990 by Beverly Roman. Since that time, Beverly and her daughter Amy (who has recently assumed the company reins and moved the business to Florida) have built the company into a destination of choice for HR/Relocation Managers - in terms of expert advice and relocation resources customized for individual companies. Their newsletter database, for example, has over 7,000 subscribers. If you are interested, you can subscribe to their (now one-page-only) monthly newsletter via this page on their site.

This month's newsletter has just been sent out and I want to thank Amy and Beverly for publishing our Expat Mentoring article as the cover feature. If you are a HR/Relocation Manager and want to boost the success rate of your company’s expatriate assignments, take a quick read to see three simple ideas for you to help your expats link into the benefits of mentoring abroad.

Fancy Vietnam in June?

Hanoi, Vietnam, is the place to be this June if you would like to participate in the 2008 Global Summit of Women - nicknamed the "Davos for Women" because of "its focus on business and the calibre of women who participate".

The Forum is now in its 18th year. Last year, the Forum was held in Berlin, Germany. It hosted 1,000 participants from 95 countries, including 44 women government Ministers, as well as top women corporate, entrepreneurial and NGO leaders. You can see the video from last year here on the Globe Women website.

This year, the theme will be "Women and Asia: Driving The Global Economy". The program promises another fabulous array of VIP speakers, plus break-out sessions aligned as following:

• Leadership Development track;
• Entrepreneurial track;
• Micro-Enterprise track; and
• Issues track.

Dates are: Thursday 5 June - Saturday 7 June.

If you decide to go, please let me know, as I am going for the first time and would love to meet you there.

Best wishes, Andrea.

Note: On Wikipedia, "Davos" is explained as a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos, in Switzerland. It is described as famous for being the host to the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the annual meeting of global political and business elites, which is often referred to as simply Davos. To read more, click here.

Got an Expat Blog in Asia?

Hi Everyone, I talked today to the Founder and CEO of Expat-Advisory Services (EAS), Anthony Galloway, and to the Managing Editor for EAS, Naomi Robinson - both based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The EAS web site, with the catch-phrase "The Insider's Guide to Asia" has been up for about four years, so if you are in (or have been in) Asia, you may have heard of the site. Currently, they cover Cambodia, South Korea, Vietnam and Laos. They have plans to expand to another three or four countries this year - so they are growing.

Anyway, Naomi kindly asked me to help promote their Blog in Asia competition. Basically, each month, the best blog post submitted to EAS will win US$100. At the end of the year, their "best Blogger" will be awarded US$1200. Now that would be a nice end-of-year bonus to travel somewhere exotic within the region!

To see more details about the competition, please Click Here. Good luck Expat Women in Asia Bloggers! :-)

Andrea

International Women's Day

On March 8 (and/or in the week prior or after), thousands of women around the world get together in some shape or form to celebrate International Women's Day (IWD).

According to this great United Nations (UN) link: "[IWD] is a day when women are recognized for their achievements without regard to divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political. It is an occasion for looking back on past struggles and accomplishments, and more importantly, for looking ahead to the untapped potential and opportunities that await future generations of women."

Did you do anything for IWD? Go to a luncheon? Participate in an organized fun run? Get together with your girlfriends? Or watch some IWD videos on YouTube? :-)

This year, I had the pleasure of attending a breakfast function for my local women's network in Australia: the Sunshine Coast Business Women's Network (SCBWN). The guest speakers for the morning were Hariati and Serena - two of the first female pilots to fly for Royal Brunei Airlines.

Hariati and Serena were incredibly inspirational. These women grew up in an Islamic society, on an island (Brunei) of only around 300,000 people. They both spent their childhood dreaming of being a pilot, but given that women were never allowed to do that in Brunei, it would have been easy to let go of their dreams... but they never did. They studied the subjects that they hoped one day would help them be pilots and they never lost faith in their dreams.

In 1999, both Hariati and Serena saw the advertisement by Royal Brunei for one (yes, just one) female pilot cadetship. They told us at the breakfast of their overwhelming sense of joy that day - as they knew that their dreams and hard work had not been wasted - they knew that they finally had a chance to fly high in the skies. (For the record, the women did not compete against each other, as one of them did not apply until the following year, due to age restrictions.)

Hariati and Serena both overcome some amazing odds to achieve the success that they enjoy today. For that reason, I am trying to interview one of these wonderful women as a Success Story for ExpatWomen.com in an upcoming month. The women are keen - but I am just needing to navigate through some "company security barriers" first. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, here are three inspirational quotes that I scribbled down from their talk, so you can share a little in some of the mottos that these ladies live by:

• "Women who want to be as good as men, have no ambition" (Serena was given this quote on a coffee mug, which she still uses it every day)

• "Write your own history, shape your own future"

• "N o t h i n g is impossible - n e v e r give up on your dreams"

Happy International Women's Day for last Saturday! Andrea.

Other IWD links:
Aurora's IWD page (UK-based)
Wikipedia's IWD page

Expat Women March Newsletter - Now Online

A very warm hello to everyone on this beautiful day. Our March newsletter is now online here. We managed to send the newsletter to half of our Members today. The task will be finished tomorrow, for those who missed out today. Please bear with us. It takes a couple of hours to send to all of the newsletter groups, so occasionally we run out of time (or encounter technical hiccups) and the task then gets spread over two days. If you have not joined us yet, we invite you to sign up now, so you do not miss the next inspirational dose in April!

One feature in the newsletter that has not previously been mentioned on this blog is the Double Vision in Mexico article. This was an interview that Jill and I did last year with Elena Bucciero of (A)WAY magazine in Belgium, about living in Mexico. (A)WAY published the interview in their hard-copy magazine in January/February 2008, as part of their regular feature showcasing what it is like to live in different countries as expatriates. If you are moving to Mexico, or have just moved to Mexico, you may be interested in the article.

If you think you live in an interesting expat location and you would like Elena to consider interviewing you in the future, you can contact Elena via this online contact form (remembering to mark it for Elena's attention). Elena says: "The idea behind this 'interview-type' piece is to tell other expats what it is like living in various countries worldwide - to give them a 'flavour' of the lifestyle, people, food, culture, etc. as well as information about all the other things which are really important to expat families - education, healthcare, accommodation, cost of living, etc."

By the way, if you are in Belgium and you do not already subscribe, I encourage you to seek out the magazine at some point - it is very nice (they sent me a copy) - and 15,000 readers must be onto something, right? (I saw on their website that a two-year subscription costs 30 Euros.)

Have a wonderful weekend, Everyone! Andrea

Thank You Expat Women Mentors

Those of you who have a keen eye may have noticed that our new-look web site does not include the "Forums" or "Mentors" sections that we had in the past. Well, your eyes are not mistaken, those sections are not hidden anywhere on the new site... sadly, those two sections have both been taken off the site, due to spam and maintenance issues. (We announced the withdrawal of the Forums in our February newsletter and we are going to announce the withdrawal of the Mentors section in our upcoming March newsletter.)

The good news is that we have started looking for more creative, user-generated ways to stimulate online expat women networking. We hope to have an alternative networking format to replace the Forums and Mentors sections later in the year.

A H-U-G-E thank you to every single one of our 150 or so Expat Women Mentors, who volunteered their time and wisdom on our site. You are all wonderfully generous women and you really did make a difference!

Thanks for your support everyone, Andrea.

Want Some Tips On Writing & Publishing Your Book?

Anyone who is interested in getting some tips and insights on writing and publishing that book that is inside of them, I highly recommend taking a read of last week's discussion on Barbara Gabogrecan's Micro Biz Navigator Forum for Guest Experts, facilitated by Jo Parfitt, a British expat woman in The Netherlands:

http://www.forum.micronavigator.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=184

Jo, and some of the other published authors who participated in the discussion, share some really great insights that we could all learn from, if we are thinking of writing/publishing a book.

Go for it!

Television Opportunities

Hi Everyone, You may notice on our ExpatWomen.com home page that there is a prompt to visit this blog which says: "Want to get our gossip first? Read our latest news and find out how to be on television!"

If you're new to the Blog and want to know what the "television" bit means, here is an explanation...

From time to time, media (journalists for newspapers, magazines and television shows) contact us looking for Expat Women to feature in various projects. If you scroll through the previous postings, you will see some examples.

We started trying to find women to match the opportunities, but then we decided just to post the requests on this blog as they came through, as there are surely more of you 'out there' that we don't know about, that might appreciate the inside goss.

So, if you are interested in these types of opportunities, just keep an eye on this blog. ;-)

Cheers, Andrea.